Unrest as Suleja Army Barrack is demolished

The old military barrack at Rafin Sayin along Suleja-Abuja road, Niger State, was recently demolished.

OAK TV can authoritatively report that bulldozers were mobilized, with operatives of various security agencies as guards, to demolish the facility.

The security personnel who raided the area as early as 7am, ordered the residents to vacate, giving them no time to take out their belongings, the residents disclosed to OAK TV.

The residents, comprising families of retired solders and civilian occupiers who were mostly tenants lamented that all they had owned, including foodstuff and dresses, were buried in the wreckage of the demolition.

A number of the residents who said they had resided there for decades, lamented that they did not know where to go and how to start a new life due to lack of money to even evacuate some of what they were left with as their own.

Responding, the information officer of the Suleja Local Government Area, Mr. Jibril Bisallah told OAK TV that the area was built in the 1970s for some military men after the civil war exercise for temporary use, before the completion of a military barrack in Kontagora, also in Niger State.

“This place was given to the Nigerian Army in ’70s and in that year, between 1972, 1973, 1974 as a stop-over place because that time they were building the Nagwamatse Barrack in Kontagora.

“On the way to Kontagora, some soldiers were pulled from Keffi, Enugu and other places to come so that they can make up that Artillery Barrack in Nagwamatse, Kontagora. So they stayed here as a stop-over. After finishing the barrack, they left.

“Some of the soldiers, about 10 of them, their retirement time caught them here, so they could not follow because they were already retired… that is how this place was gathered and people that are not even soldiers, people that are not even retired soldiers came in here.

“Ten soldiers only retired here, six have died, only four are alive now.

“So the Niger state government now says it needs its land back… so we need our land back. So we now come to take back our own property,” he todl OAK TV.